We take a look at the available evidence in The Politics
of Immigration: Questions and Answers, second edition, Chapter 4, “Why
Can’t They Just ‘Get Legal’?”:
Children born in the United States are U.S. citizens, even
if their parents are out-of-status immigrants. Opponents of immigration like to
call such children “anchor babies,” implying that immigrant parents use their
U.S.-born children as a way to establish themselves here. In July 2010 Senator
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed on Fox News that unauthorized women come to the
United States simply to “drop and leave” their babies.
Most citizen children of undocumented immigrants are
actually born some time after their parents have settled in the United States,
according to a study of babies born to immigrants from March 2009 to March
2010. Just 9 percent of the out-of-status parents had arrived in 2008 or later;
most had been in the United States for a number of years when the babies were
born—30 percent had arrived between 2004 and 2007, and 61 percent arrived
before 2004. For its October 2005 survey, Bendixen & Associates asked
undocumented immigrants to give their reasons for migrating to the United
States. The respondents overwhelmingly cited work opportunities; having “anchor
babies” didn’t even rate a mention.
In any case, having a U.S. citizen child doesn’t help
undocumented immigrants gain legal status, or even protect them from
deportation. U.S. citizens have to be at least twenty-one years old to sponsor
their parents for legal residency. Each year, thousands of people who have
U.S.-born children are deported, leaving families shattered. A 2012 study by
the New York University School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic found that 87
percent of New York City immigration cases involving parents of U.S. citizen
children between 2005 and 2010 ended in deportation….
If we
ended birthright citizenship, what status would the U.S.-born children of
undocumented immigrants have? Would they also
be undocumented? In that case, ending birthright citizenship would increase the
number of undocumented people in the country; the undocumented population would
be at least 44 percent larger by 2050, according to a projection by the
nonprofit Migration Policy Institute project. In other words, revoking
the country’s long tradition of granting citizenship to everyone born here
would expand and make permanent an underclass of vulnerable, easily exploited
people without full rights—very much like the U.S. South under Jim Crow laws or
South Africa under apartheid.
[We’re occasionally posting excerpts from the second edition
of The Politics
of Immigration: Questions and Answers. You can order here or
from your favorite bookseller.]
